


Half Sick of Shadows

by bloodravenclaw



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-23 19:23:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21086537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodravenclaw/pseuds/bloodravenclaw
Summary: After the emotional turbulence of their first months, Francis and Charles have found equilibrium. A bittersweet sequel to my previous work, It Was Really Nothing (https://archiveofourown.org/works/16606181), set near the opposite equinox, but can also be read on its own.





	Half Sick of Shadows

_He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer. _

_ \--The Once and Future King (T. H. White) _

A stiff breeze rattled the red leaves of the maple trees over Francis’s front porch, and he fumbled with cold fingers to get the key into the lock. He welcomed the autumn, but he ought to have brought gloves that morning. The locking mechanism clicked, and Francis entered and shut the door behind him. He took off his coat, hung it on a hook by the door and set his shoes on beside the entry rug. He put the video he’d rented on the kitchen table and put on the kettle to boil.

He’d had a long day. Julian’s class had gone well, but he’d had to run around town doing errands all afternoon, and now the last thing he wanted was to study more conjugations_ . _Languages came naturally enough to him that he didn’t have to study too much, but he always got bogged down in the conjugations. He briefly considered opening his textbook, but his utter lack of enthusiasm convinced him otherwise. He had other things to do, and he’d either get to it today or he wouldn’t.

He remembered the newcomer to their class-- Richard, his name was. _ Would you like to sleep with me, _ Francis had asked him in Latin. At the time it seemed like a clever and charming sort of thing to say, but looking back he withered in embarrassment. Richard was handsome, sure, but had Francis really had to be so forward? But Richard had seemed not to understand, and anyway, it was just a few seconds’ exchange. He shook his head and decided he could worry about it later, and besides, he wanted to tidy his apartment a little before Charles came over. They were having roasted chicken and butternut squash, which Francis had prepared the night before and which he would just have to finish in the oven when Charles arrived. He’d also rented _ Monty Python and the Holy Grail _, in case they wanted to watch something later-- they’d seen it before, but it had been fun to watch, and there hadn’t been anything new at the video store.

The kettle started to boil. He poured the hot water over a tea bag and sat at the kitchen table. He looked at the piece of artwork he’d bought himself for his birthday, a small print of Waterhouse’s _ The Lady of Shalott _. It hung across from the kitchen table, and he liked to look at it as he drank his tea. Her bright red hair, her shining wistful face, her candles going out as she lay herself down on her funeral boat-- something about it resonated in his soul in a way he couldn’t articulate.

~~~

Just as Francis decided to sit down at the kitchen table with his textbooks to learn verbs after all, the front door opened, and Charles entered. Francis caught sight of him in the mirror by the door before he saw him directly.

“Hey, you,” he said, taking the seat on his left, his ankle resting over Francis’s.

“Hey.” Francis looked over at him and smiled. Part of Charles’s hair stood up from taking his hat off at the door, and his cheeks were red from the cold. “How are you?” He pushed away his textbook.

“I’m good, but tired.”

He didn’t ask about Camilla or about what he’d been up to today. He didn’t want to think about Camilla or anything else from the outside world right now. 

“What are we having for dinner?” 

Francis told him. “And I have a bottle of Chardonnay, if we want that.”

“Of course we want the Chardonnay.”

Francis got the food ready for the oven and poured the wine, and they sat talking about nothing in particular until the timer went off.

They brought their plates over to the coffee table. Francis refilled their wine glasses. They wouldn’t get drunk, didn’t have to get drunk any more, but they still liked to, still liked the way wine softened and fuzzed the edges of things. 

Francis set up the movie and sat next to Charles on the couch as it started. He hooked lis leg over Charles’s. Charles put a hand on Francis’s thigh. Francis smiled in contentment. This would not have happened six months ago. They weren’t in a relationship, really, but this was … something. Stable. Equilibrium. Charles still had Camilla, of course; Francis knew that. And Charles would never directly acknowledge what existed between them, would never go on a date with him in public or give up sleeping with Camilla to belong to Francis alone. He consoled himself by trying to remember that what Charles had with Camilla wasn’t a legitimate relationship either, and never could be. But it still hurt, sometimes, thinking about Charles and Camilla together, and himself sitting here alone in his dark apartment. It still hurt, hiding what they had together in the shadows at the edges of the world, keeping it small, keeping it secret. It hurt not in the sharp, stabbing way it used to, but dully, persistently, the remote ache of an old wound. Charles had Camilla, but Francis had other men sometimes, too, so couldn’t he go on bearing it?

He studied the side of Charles’s face as it flickered in the bluish light from the television. Beautiful, but somehow remote. Charles noticed him staring and caught his eye.

“What do you think of Richard?” Francis blurted. He hadn’t known that he would ask that, or even that Richard was still on his mind, but he wanted something, some reaction, validation that Charles liked him best.

“He seems alright. He’s good at Greek, anyway. Why?”

“No, I mean, what do you think of _ him _?”

“What?” The corner of his mouth turned down, and he glanced quickly at Francis before looking back at the TV. “Oh. Well, I don’t know.” He looked back at the movie.

Francis knew it was a touchy subject, but pressed on. “Well, I think he’s attractive.”

Charles wouldn’t look at Francis. “Okay.” His voice was level, but he took his hand away from Francis’s thigh.

Too late, Francis realized he should have kept his mouth shut. He remembered the last time that in jealousy he had tried to provoke a reaction from Charles like this, after a night out with the others. He hadn’t been able to bear sitting across the table from Charles knowing his hand was on Camilla’s thigh under the table, knowing he couldn’t touch him, couldn’t have him. So as they left he had caught up to Camilla and kissed her, reeling drunk, not thinking, feeling only the screaming animal hurt of loving and not having, hoping Charles would see and feel the same pain and be sorry. As soon as he’d done it he’d wanted to take it back but it was too late, and Charles had shoved him roughly back, and hissed _ what are you doing, _and Francis had feared that Charles would strike him, but he didn’t. Instead he had ignored him and frozen Francis out for several days.

Francis pulled himself back up from the deep pool of his memories. He touched the back of Charles’s wrist. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.” They had an agreement, unspoken but no less real, not to talk about hard topics during these evenings.

“It’s okay.” He put his hand back on Francis’s thigh, and they continued to eat and watch the Monty Pythons on their adventure. 

Midway through the movie, Francis got up to put their plates in the sink. He sat back down and laid his head in Charles’s lap.

“Tired?”

“A little. I want to finish the movie though.” He felt Charles’s fingers stroking through his hair and sighed, content. “That feels nice.”

He traced a finger around the edge of Francis’s ear. A pleasant shiver ran down the back of his neck, and he sat up again and pulled his legs up onto the couch so he was tucked next to Charles. He leaned in and kissed him at the place where Charles’s jaw met his neck. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to bed?” Charles asked.

“Yes. It’s almost over, anyway.”

“Okay.” Twenty minutes or so later, the movie ended and they did the washing up from dinner and got ready for bed.

~~~

Francis turned off the lights and climbed into bed. The room was pleasantly chilly because he’d opened the window by a couple of inches. He lay down, his side pressed against Charles’s, taking pleasure in the warmth and pressure of his body. He trailed his fingers down his chest. “Hey, you,” he breathed. The wine made the world soft and blurry.

Charles stroked Francis’s spine. He said something back that Francis couldn’t quite hear, but he could feel the rhythm of the vibrations in his chest. He rolled over and kissed Charles’s mouth, slowly and sweetly. There was no need to rush, they were in no hurry. Charles pulled him closer.

Francis remembered that first time they had slept together, almost blackout drunk, left alone together (or maybe Francis had stayed with him on purpose, waiting for the others to leave). He remembered the intoxicated fumbling and the hurried grabbing, the furtive silence and the sloppy, desperate kissing. He remembered their clothes falling to the floor and the thrill of taking him into his mouth. And he remembered the next morning, with Charles gone, and the feeling of unbalanced uncertainty, not knowing if Charles would even remember it. Seeing him in class the next day with his furtive glances under his eyelashes. He had taken Charles’s avoidance for shyness at first, after the unexpected intimacy of the night before. He’d realized later that it wasn’t quite that. It had stung, but Francis had managed to accept it, and from his acceptance came the sweet, quiet nights like this one.

They’d reached, if not the brightly-colored love Francis had hoped for at first, the shadowed outline of it. They had some kind of stability. Equilibrium. The shadows did not fill his void, but they had a good time together. Charles had lost his reticence, Francis’s pain had faded to a dull ache. _ We’re okay. _

~~~

He awoke in his cold room to the softness of morning light through the white curtains and the smell of Charles’s hair. Their clothes from the night before lay crumpled on the floor beside the bed. A strip of sunlight through the curtain gap ran over the white sheets, lay across his cheek and gilded his hair. For a few moments, Francis just looked at him asleep, the arch of his cheekbones and the delicate curl of his eyelashes. Somehow, some way, this beautiful man was-- well, not his. But he was here now, here sometimes, and Francis could lay with him for a few more minutes in the quiet warmth under the blankets.

With soft melancholy settling like a seashell in his heart, Francis leaned over and kissed Charles awake.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd had this one in the works on and off for several months now and figured it was about time to put it out there. More forthcoming, hopefully much faster, but first it's time for another reread of the book :))
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


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